Hi all,
Now that my last exams of 2012 are over, I finally have some time to write a
lengthy email :-)
FSweekend
Too sad I could only join
on Saturday (due to exams), but I'm glad I did come! Meeting James,
Alexis and Christian in person was really nice, and so was the rest of the
day. Next year I hope to be there three full days, but I'm afraid the
examperiod will be around the same weeks...
Despite the somewhat
less organised event, I think we did pretty well overal. We had some
interesting talks, and we definitely attracted some new users.
Some of my observations at FSweekend:
We
missed the big banners. Without clear "name" badge for the project, we
cannot expect people to know/find us. A few people did read our T-shirts and
found us that way, but I'm sure some people had the intention to visit
the FlightGear booth, but were unable to find it (or forgot about it and
because there was no big banner, so they simply didn't get a mental reminder
while walking by).Looking at pictures on other simulator websites, it looks as
if lots of people did not visit the Uiverzaal (the room where FG was located).
Probably because it is somewhat "tucked away in a corner". Maybe this is
something that needs to be forwarded to Frans?Nevertheless I think I spoke to
more people that knew about FlightGear than ever before.
That seems to get better every single year.. Maybe it's because the
same people visit Lelystad every year; maybe it's because people start
looking for alternatives to MSFS...Beamers are great, as they can provide a
view to many more spectators than you can gather around an ordinary screen.
We did have the largest screen so far, but it was floating somewhere in
the room, so there was no clear connection to our booth.
Being able to give
people a DVD/CD/USB (the installer is 640 MB for Windows, that should fit on a
CD...) with the latest version of FlightGear would probably
encourage them to install it and actually try the software. We do tell
people to download it from our website, but most of them will forget
about it. If you bring a CD home with you, you will probably at least look at
it
before you throw it away. Of course this costs money, so we may need to
look at some fundraising (sponsoring?).That's enough for now :-)
SaitekDurk, in case you didn't find Stuart's article yet, here is the link:
http://wiki.flightgear.org/Hardware_Review:_Saitek_Pro_Flight_Cessna_controls
Collimated display
Hm, thinking about it, I could try to get
something going at my university. "We" recently bought a 727 home
cockpit, which is used as promotion material on open days. The builder
of that cockpit still "owns" it partly, but the university uses it. It could
make sense to make the display for the university (using their
machinery), donate it to them and in return have it shipped to Lelystad
once a year...
Comparing with MSFS and X-Plane
Feel free to use the wiki to make a list of "unique features" and/or
"comparison to other simulator".
Someone started this a while ago, but it could use some loving care:
http://wiki.flightgear.org/Unique_Features
I once started on a "key binding" comparison, (hopefully) making it easier for
people to switch:
http://wiki.flightgear.org/Key_commands_compared_to_other_simulators
In this series, we can also add a "dictionary" (eg. what we call "liveries" are
called "paintjobs" in certain communities) etc..
Listing the differences would also make a good "feature request" list, so we
can work on great features that other sims have, but we lack. I think people
would like to have at least the same, and possible better/more features before
they'd consider switching.
Aircraft download page
I have a fully functional revamped download page set up at
http://flightgear.byethost31.com/aircraft/aircraftpage.html, but there were
some issues getting it operational on flightgear.org intialy, so we decided to
push the "old" scheme for this release. We can always add this interactive page
though, and now that my last exams of 2012 are over, I'll have a closer look at
it again. Feedback is welcome!
Cheers,
Gijs
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everyone hates slow websites. So do we.
Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics
Download AppDynamics Lite for free today:
http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_nov
_______________________________________________
Flightgear-devel mailing list
Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
